Delegating

Hello! David J here again bringing you more of the steps on my journey toward financial independence.

An interesting e-mail came my way today. The writer says that when Thomas Edison discovered the way to record a human voice, it is said that he called in a model maker and had the man sketch the machine for Edison's idea.

In recent posts, I've mentioned that I've been reading "The Four Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferris. One of the key principles Timothy talks about in the book has to do with team building and delegation. That is, build the team and coach them. One person can only do so much, yet when you "multiply yourself" by teaching key skills to others you multiply the amount of work that can be done in the same time frame.

Here, we see that Edison called in someone to do some work for him. Edison would have had to take his own time to do the engineering and produce the drawings. Instead, he hired it out and was able to work on his own tasks while the model maker handled the task of designing the device.

It is also written of Henry Ford that with the touch of a button he could summon someone to his office who could perform research on a concept, run an errand, propose solutions to engineering problems, ... whatever Ford needed.

History shows time and again that great leaders were great delegators, great team leaders, great coaches who could assemble the individuals or teams they needed to accomplish tasks of any size or complexity. Their celebrated accomplishments were the result of their leadership more than their own physical efforts.

In their beginnings, of course, these same leaders did do most of their own work. This taught them how to do the work, and break the work down into tasks that could be distributed among the members of their teams. As time went by, they moved from a physical role to an executive role - a leadership role.

Of course, teams are no more or less successful than any individual. Teams are what some authors call a "mastermind": the product of the members' collective minds and personalities.

Sometimes, teams "get it wrong" and it falls to the leader to redirect them and have them start again.

That is a trying time for many first-time leaders because the temptation to "take over" and "do it yourself" is strongest when a team has erred. There's a word for that temptation: co-dependence. That is the time when the leader must summon their greatest inner strength, provide direction to the team, and have them start again.

The goal in any endeavor is the desired result. The effort is journey, not the goal. So, when an effort misses the mark or goes astray we must back-track as needed, re-examine what everyone brings to the team and then channel those contributions into a new effort. The leader must, when needed, help the team explore new options they have perhaps not considered, or may have considered and not pursued. In the end, however, it is team which must be led to success in achieving any desired result, rather than the leader pushing the team aside.

As we are building our business in this blog, I am learning and passing my learning on to you, my good readers.

In next post, the promised "The First Thing" post, we'll talk more about how we leverage ourselves, build our team and start moving tasks through this "machine" we are building.

In "Before the First Thing", we already talked about the first team members we bring on board: Business Attorneys and Accountants to help us decide how to structure our business entity so it stands by itself and does not expose our home, our savings and our personal property to unnecessary risk. We could take the time to study the law and accounting in great depth, or we can do our due dilligence to verify that what we discuss with our legal and accounting professionals truly is the best decision for us.

In the next post, "The First Thing", we'll discuss the other members of our team: real estate agents, title companies, sources of funding, and more.

In some of the other correspondence which has been coming my way, the writers have discussed how the Government put so much focus on "The American Dream of Homeownership" that the greedy people developed the schemes and financial "products" which contributed heavily to the downfall of the U.S. economy. Everyone got so caught up in the euphoria of quickly rising prices and housing values that they lost track of what was backing those values and supporting those prices. When the support got kicked out from under them, both prices and values fell leaving economic chaos in their wake.

Cleaning up after that falls to us, the real estate investors, to clean up after them and turn their mess into the "fertilizer" which returns neighborhoods, villages and cities to vital, growing communities.

That's part of what this journey is all about, in addition to the pursuit of financial independence.

We'll talk again soon!

Take care - be well!

Much Success!